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Is SaaS Killing Native Linux App Development?

Posted by Soulskill on from the won't-somebody-think-of-the-penguins dept.

jfruhlinger writes "In a world where 'app' is the new buzzword, the development of native Linux apps is lagging. Some of this can be attributed to the usual community infighting (the latest version of which is argument about Ubuntu's Unity interface), but there may be something deeper at play: Linux advocates have for so long advocated browser-accessed software as a service as a way to break out of Microsoft's proprietary desktop. Now that this world has arrived, there's less incentive to work on native Linux apps. But of course, entrusting your functionality and data to a cloud provider like Google has its own set of concerns for free software fans."

2 of 330 comments (clear)

  1. Argument about Unity? by Chonnawonga · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is no argument about Unity. We all agree that it sucks. There is minor disagreement about the degree to which it sucks.

    Does that really stop anyone from writing Linux applications?

  2. Re:Native GUI app development is a pain by zlogic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Qt is an incredible toolkit. The only problem is that it looks "different" in Gnome, but about a year ago this problem seems to be solved.
    Qt Creator is one of the highest-quality IDEs - very easy to use, powerful and not getting in the way.
    Plus as a bonus Qt apps can be easily ported to Windows and MacOS, especially if they aren't using anything outside the Qt toolkit - many apps will simply compile and run with zero changes. Qt includes stuff like XML parsing, sockets, OpenGL etc. so you can probably will never need anything except Qt.
    The only thing some people don't like about Qt is the need for a preprocessor and duplication of C++ stdlib stuff (like containers, I/O operatuins), which supposedly fragments C++ development. But I actually like this - no need to use use multiple library dependencies, everything is included in Qt SDK, along with great documentation and works out of the box.
    There are concerns about Qt's future, since it no longer fits in Nokia's strategy. But it's quality definetly exceeds most toolkits like wxwidgets, gtk, mono and many others. Probably because the "boring" stuff like documenting and testing was done by full-time employees.

    Oh, and Windows native C++ development is horrible. Just look at how you're supposed to display the standard "open files" dialog and get the selected file names.